THE PTOLEMIES.
The founder of the dynasty of the Ptolemies--the ruler into whose hands
the kingdom of Egypt fell, as has already been stated, at the death of
Alexander the Great--was a Macedonian general in Alexander's army. The
circumstances of his birth, and the events which led to his entering into
the service of Alexander, were somewhat peculiar. His mother, whose name
was Arsinoë, was a personal favorite and companion of Philip, king of
Macedon, the father of Alexander. Philip at length gave Arsinoë in
marriage to a certain man of his court named Lagus. A very short time
after the marriage, Ptolemy was born. Philip treated the child with the
same consideration and favor that he had evinced toward the mother. The
boy was called the son of Lagus, but his position in the royal court of
Macedon was as high and honorable, and the attentions which he received
were as great, as he could have expected to enjoy if he had been in
reality a son of the king. As he grew up, he attained to official
stations of considerable responsibility and power.
In the course of time, a certain transaction occurred, by means of which
Ptolemy involved himself in serious difficulty with Philip, though by the
same means he made Alexander very strongly his friend. There was a
province of the Persian empire called Caria, situated in the southwestern
part of Asia Minor. The governor of this province had offered his daughter
to Philip as the wife of one of his sons named Aridæus, the half brother
of Alexander. Alexander's mother, who was not the mother of Aridæus, was
jealous of this proposed marriage. She thought that it was part of a
scheme for bringing Aridæus forward into public notice, and finally making
him the heir to Philip's throne; whereas she was very earnest that this
splendid inheritance should be reserved for her own son. Accordingly, she
proposed to Alexander that they should send a secret embassage to the
Persian governor, and represent to him that it would be much better, both
for him and for his daughter, that she should have Alexander instead of
Aridæus for a husband, and induce him, if possible, to demand of Philip
that he should make the change.
Alexander entered readily into this scheme, and various courtiers, Ptolemy
among the rest, undertook to aid him in the accomplishment of it. The
embassy was sent. The governor of Caria was very much pleased with the
change which they proposed to him. In fact, the whole plan seemed to be
going on very successfully toward its accomplishment, when, by some means
or other, Philip discovered the intrigue. He went immediately into
Alexander's apartment, highly excited with resentment and anger. He had
never intended to make Aridæus, whose birth on the mother's side was
obscure and ignoble, the heir to his throne, and he reproached Alexander
in the bitterest terms for being of so debased and degenerate a spirit as
to desire to marry the daughter of a Persian governor; a man who was, in
fact, the mere slave, as he said, of a barbarian king.
Alexander's scheme was thus totally defeated; and so displeased was his
father with the officers who had undertaken to aid him in the execution of
it, that he banished them all from the kingdom. Ptolemy, in consequence of
this decree, wandered about an exile from his country for some years,
until at length the death of Philip enabled Alexander to recall him.
Alexander succeeded his father as King of Macedon, and immediately made
Ptolemy one of his principal generals. Ptolemy rose, in fact, to a very
high command in the Macedonian army, and distinguished himself very
greatly in all the celebrated conqueror's subsequent campaigns. In the
Persian invasion, Ptolemy commanded one of the three grand divisions of
the army, and he rendered repeatedly the most signal services to the cause
of his master. He was employed on the most distant and dangerous
enterprises, and was often intrusted with the management of affairs of the
utmost importance. He was very successful in all his undertakings. He
conquered armies, reduced fortresses, negotiated treaties, and evinced, in
a word, the highest degree of military energy and skill. He once saved
Alexander's life by discovering and revealing a dangerous conspiracy which
had been formed against the king. Alexander had the opportunity to requite
this favor, through a divine interposition vouchsafed to him, it was said,
for the express purpose of enabling him to evince his gratitude. Ptolemy
had been wounded by a poisoned arrow, and when all the remedies and
antidotes of the physicians had failed, and the patient was apparently
about to die, an effectual means of cure was revealed to Alexander in a
dream, and Ptolemy, in his turn, was saved.
At the great rejoicings at Susa, when Alexander's conquests were
completed, Ptolemy was honored with a golden crown, and he was married,
with great pomp and ceremony, to Artacama, the daughter of one of the most
distinguished Persian generals.
At length Alexander died suddenly, after a night of drinking and carousal
at Babylon. He had no son old enough to succeed him, and his immense
empire was divided among his generals. Ptolemy obtained Egypt for his
share. He repaired immediately to Alexandria, with a great army, and a
great number of Greek attendants and followers, and there commenced a
reign which continued, in great prosperity and splendor, for forty years.
The native Egyptians were reduced, of course, to subjection and bondage.
All the offices in the army, and all stations of trust and responsibility
in civil life, were filled by Greeks. Alexandria was a Greek city, and it
became at once one of the most important commercial centers in all those
seas. Greek and Roman travelers found now a language spoken in Egypt which
they could understand, and philosophers and scholars could gratify the
curiosity which they had so long felt, in respect to the institutions, and
monuments, and wonderful physical characteristics of the country, with
safety and pleasure. In a word, the organization of a Greek government
over the ancient kingdom, and the establishment of the great commercial
relations of the city of Alexandria, conspired to bring Egypt out from its
concealment and seclusion, and to open it in some measure to the
intercourse, as well as to bring it more fully under the observation, of
the rest of mankind.
Ptolemy, in fact, made it a special object of his policy to accomplish
these ends. He invited Greek scholars, philosophers, poets, and artists,
in great numbers, to come to Alexandria, and to make his capital their
abode. He collected an immense library, which subsequently, under the name
of the Alexandrian library, became one of the most celebrated collections
of books and manuscripts that was ever made. We shall have occasion to
refer more particularly to this library in the next chapter.
Besides prosecuting these splendid schemes for the aggrandizement of
Egypt, King Ptolemy was engaged, during almost the whole period of his
reign, in waging incessant wars with the surrounding nations. He engaged
in these wars, in part, for the purpose of extending the boundaries of his
empire, and in part for self-defense against the aggressions and
encroachments of other powers. He finally succeeded in establishing his
kingdom on the most stable and permanent basis, and then, when he was
drawing toward the close of his life, being in fact over eighty years of
age, he abdicated his throne in favor of his youngest son, whose name was
also Ptolemy. Ptolemy the father, the founder of the dynasty, is known
commonly in history by the name of Ptolemy Soter. His son is called
Ptolemy Philadelphus. This son, though the youngest, was preferred to his
brothers as heir to the throne on account of his being the son of the most
favored and beloved of the monarch's wives. The determination of Soter to
abdicate the throne himself arose from his wish to put this favorite son
in secure possession of it before his death, in order to prevent the older
brothers from disputing the succession. The coronation of Philadelphus was
made one of the most magnificent and imposing ceremonies that royal pomp
and parade ever arranged. Two years afterward Ptolemy the father died,
and was buried by his son with a magnificence almost equal to that of his
own coronation. His body was deposited in a splendid mausoleum, which had
been built for the remains of Alexander; and so high was the veneration
which was felt by mankind for the greatness of his exploits and the
splendor of his reign, that divine honors were paid to his memory. Such
was the origin of the great dynasty of the Ptolemies.
Some of the early sovereigns of the line followed in some degree the
honorable example set them by the distinguished founder of it; but this
example was soon lost, and was succeeded by the most extreme degeneracy
and debasement. The successive sovereigns began soon to live and to reign
solely for the gratification of their own sensual propensities and
passions. Sensuality begins sometimes with kindness, but it ends always in
the most reckless and intolerable cruelty. The Ptolemies became, in the
end, the most abominable and terrible tyrants that the principle of
absolute and irresponsible power ever produced. There was one vice in
particular, a vice which they seem to have adopted from the Asiatic
nations of the Persian empire, that resulted in the most awful
consequences. This vice was incest.
The law of God, proclaimed not only in the Scriptures, but in the native
instincts of the human soul, forbids intermarriages among those connected
by close ties of consanguinity. The necessity for such a law rests on
considerations which can not here be fully explained. They are
considerations, however, which arise from causes inherent in the very
nature of man as a social being, and which are of universal, perpetual,
and insurmountable force. To guard his creatures against the deplorable
consequences, both physical and moral, which result from the practice of
such marriages, the great Author of Nature has implanted in every mind an
instinctive sense of their criminality, powerful enough to give effectual
warning of the danger, and so universal as to cause a distinct
condemnation of them to be recorded in almost every code of written law
that has ever been promulgated among mankind. The Persian sovereigns were,
however, above all law, and every species of incestuous marriage was
practiced by them without shame. The Ptolemies followed their example.
One of the most striking exhibitions of the nature of incestuous domestic
life which is afforded by the whole dismal panorama of pagan vice and
crime, is presented in the history of the great-grandfather of the
Cleopatra who is the principal subject of this narrative. He was
Ptolemy Physcon, the seventh in the line. It is necessary to give some
particulars of his history and that of his family, in order to explain the
circumstances under which Cleopatra herself came upon the stage. The name
Physcon, which afterward became his historical designation, was originally
given him in contempt and derision. He was very small of stature in
respect to height, but his gluttony and sensuality had made him immensely
corpulent in body, so that he looked more like a monster than a man. The
term Physcon was a Greek word, which denoted opprobriously the ridiculous
figure that he made.
The circumstances of Ptolemy Physcon's accession to the throne afford not
only a striking illustration of his character, but a very faithful though
terrible picture of the manners and morals of the times. He had been
engaged in a long and cruel war with his brother, who was king before him,
in which war he had perpetrated all imaginable atrocities, when at length
his brother died, leaving as his survivors his wife, who was also his
sister, and a son who was yet a child. This son was properly the heir to
the crown. Physcon himself, being a brother, had no claim, as against a
son. The name of the queen was Cleopatra. This was, in fact, a very common
name among the princesses of the Ptolemaic line. Cleopatra, besides her
son, had a daughter, who was at this time a young and beautiful girl. Her
name was also Cleopatra. She was, of course, the niece, as her mother was
the sister, of Physcon.
The plan of Cleopatra the mother, after her husband's death, was to make
her son the king of Egypt, and to govern herself, as regent, until he
should become of age. The friends and adherents of Physcon, however,
formed a strong party in _his_ favor. They sent for him to come to
Alexandria to assert his claims to the throne. He came, and a new civil
war was on the point of breaking out between the brother and sister, when
at length the dispute was settled by a treaty, in which it was stipulated
that Physcon should marry Cleopatra, and be king; but that he should make
the son of Cleopatra by her former husband his heir. This treaty was
carried into effect so far as the celebration of the marriage with the
mother was concerned, and the establishment of Physcon upon the throne.
But the perfidious monster, instead of keeping his faith in respect to the
boy, determined to murder him; and so open and brutal were his habits of
violence and cruelty, that he undertook to perpetrate the deed himself, in
open day. The boy fled shrieking to the mother's arms for protection, and
Physcon stabbed and killed him there, exhibiting the spectacle of a
newly-married husband murdering the son of his wife in her very arms!
It is easy to conceive what sort of affection would exist between a
husband and a wife after such transactions as these. In fact, there had
been no love between them from the beginning. The marriage had been solely
a political arrangement. Physcon hated his wife, and had murdered her son,
and then, as if to complete the exhibition of the brutal lawlessness and
capriciousness of his passions, he ended with falling in love with her
daughter. The beautiful girl looked upon this heartless monster, as ugly
and deformed in body as he was in mind, with absolute horror. But she was
wholly in his power. He compelled her, by violence, to submit to his will.
He repudiated the mother, and forced the daughter to become his wife.
Physcon displayed the same qualities of brutal tyranny and cruelty in the
treatment of his subjects that he manifested in his own domestic
relations. The particulars we can not here give, but can only say that his
atrocities became at length absolutely intolerable, and a revolt so
formidable broke out, that he fled from the country. In fact, he barely
escaped with his life, as the mob had surrounded the palace and were
setting it on fire, intending to burn the tyrant himself and all the
accomplices of his crimes together. Physcon, however, contrived to make
his escape. He fled to the island of Cyprus, taking with him a certain
beautiful boy, his son by the Cleopatra whom he had divorced; for they had
been married long enough, before the divorce, to have a son. The name of
this boy was Memphitis. His mother was very tenderly attached to him, and
Physcon took him away on this very account, to keep him as a hostage for
his mother's good behavior. He fancied that, when he was gone, she might
possibly attempt to resume possession of the throne.
His expectations in this respect were realized. The people of Alexandria
rallied around Cleopatra, and called upon her to take the crown. She did
so, feeling, perhaps, some misgivings in respect to the danger which such
a step might possibly bring upon her absent boy. She quieted herself,
however, by the thought that he was in the hands of his own father, and
that he could not possibly come to harm.
After some little time had elapsed, and Cleopatra was beginning to be well
established in her possession of the supreme power at Alexandria, her
birth-day approached, and arrangements were made for celebrating it in the
most magnificent manner. When the day arrived, the whole city was given up
to festivities and rejoicing. Grand entertainments were given in the
palace, and games, spectacles, and plays in every variety, were exhibited
and performed in all quarters of the city. Cleopatra herself was enjoying
a magnificent entertainment, given to the lords and ladies of the court
and the officers of her army, in one of the royal palaces.
[Illustration: THE BIRTH-DAY PRESENT.]
In the midst of this scene of festivity and pleasure, it was announced to
the queen that a large box had arrived for her. The box was brought into
the apartment. It had the appearance of containing some magnificent
present, sent in at that time by some friend in honor of the occasion. The
curiosity of the queen was excited to know what the mysterious coffer
might contain. She ordered it to be opened; and the guests gathered
around, each eager to obtain the first glimpse of the contents. The lid
was removed, and a cloth beneath it was raised, when, to the unutterable
horror of all who witnessed the spectacle, there was seen the head and
hands of Cleopatra's beautiful boy, lying among masses of human flesh,
which consisted of the rest of his body cut into pieces. The head had been
left entire, that the wretched mother might recognize in the pale and
lifeless features the countenance of her son. Physcon had sent the box to
Alexandria, with orders that it should be retained until the evening of
the birth-day, and then presented publicly to Cleopatra in the midst of
the festivities of the scene. The shrieks and cries with which she filled
the apartments of the palace at the first sight of the dreadful spectacle,
and the agony of long-continued and inconsolable grief which followed,
showed how well the cruel contrivance of the tyrant was fitted to
accomplish its end.
It gives us no pleasure to write, and we are sure it can give our readers
no pleasure to peruse, such shocking stories of bloody cruelty as these.
It is necessary, however, to a just appreciation of the character of the
great subject of this history, that we should understand the nature of
the domestic influences that reigned in the family from which she sprung.
In fact, it is due, as a matter of simple justice to her, that we should
know what these influences were, and what were the examples set before her
in her early life; since the privileges and advantages which the young
enjoy in their early years, and, on the other hand, the evil influences
under which they suffer, are to be taken very seriously into the account
when we are passing judgment upon the follies and sins into which they
subsequently fall.
The monster Physcon lived, it is true, two or three generations before the
great Cleopatra; but the character of the intermediate generations, until
the time of her birth, continued much the same. In fact, the cruelty,
corruption, and vice which reigned in every branch of the royal family
increased rather than diminished. The beautiful niece of Physcon, who, at
the time of her compulsory marriage with him, evinced such an aversion to
the monster, had become, at the period of her husband's death, as great a
monster of ambition, selfishness, and cruelty as he. She had two sons,
Lathyrus and Alexander. Physcon, when he died, left the kingdom of Egypt
to her by will, authorizing her to associate with her in the government
whichever of these two sons she might choose. The oldest was best entitled
to this privilege, by his priority of birth; but she preferred the
youngest, as she thought that her own power would be more absolute in
reigning in conjunction with him, since he would be more completely under
her control. The leading powers, however, in Alexandria, resisted this
plan, and insisted on Cleopatra's associating her oldest son, Lathyrus,
with her in the government of the realm. They compelled her to recall
Lathyrus from the banishment into which she had sent him, and to put him
nominally upon the throne. Cleopatra yielded to this necessity, but she
forced her son to repudiate his wife, and to take, instead, another woman,
whom she fancied she could make more subservient to her will. The mother
and the son went on together for a time, Lathyrus being nominally king,
though her determination that she would rule, and his struggles to resist
her intolerable tyranny, made their wretched household the scene of
terrible and perpetual quarrels. At last Cleopatra seized a number of
Lathyrus's servants, the eunuchs who were employed in various offices
about the palace, and after wounding and mutilating them in a horrible
manner, she exhibited them to the populace, saying that it was Lathyrus
that had inflicted the cruel injuries upon the sufferers, and calling upon
them to arise and punish him for his crimes. In this and in other similar
ways she awakened among the people of the court and of the city such an
animosity against Lathyrus, that they expelled him from the country. There
followed a long series of cruel and bloody wars between the mother and the
son, in the course of which each party perpetrated against the other
almost every imaginable deed of atrocity and crime. Alexander, the
youngest son, was so afraid of his terrible mother, that he did not dare
to remain in Alexandria with her, but went into a sort of banishment of
his own accord. He, however, finally returned to Egypt. His mother
immediately supposed that he was intending to disturb her possession of
power, and resolved to destroy him. He became acquainted with her designs,
and, grown desperate by the long-continued pressure of her intolerable
tyranny, he resolved to bring the anxiety and terror in which he lived to
an end by killing her. This he did, and then fled the country. Lathyrus,
his brother, then returned, and reigned for the rest of his days in a
tolerable degree of quietness and peace. At length Lathyrus died, and left
the kingdom to his son, Ptolemy Auletes, who was the great Cleopatra's
father.
We can not soften the picture which is exhibited to our view in the
history of this celebrated family, by regarding the mother of Auletes, in
the masculine and merciless traits and principles which she displayed so
energetically throughout her terrible career, as an exception to the
general character of the princesses who appeared from time to time in the
line. In ambition, selfishness, unnatural and reckless cruelty, and utter
disregard of every virtuous principle and of every domestic tie, she was
but the type and representative of all the rest.
She had two daughters, for example, who were the consistent and worthy
followers of such a mother. A passage in the lives of these sisters
illustrates very forcibly the kind of sisterly affection which prevailed
in the family of the Ptolemies. The case was this:
There were two princes of Syria, a country lying northeast of the
Mediterranean Sea, and so not very far from Egypt, who, though they were
brothers, were in a state of most deadly hostility to each other. One had
attempted to poison the other, and afterward a war had broken out between
them, and all Syria was suffering from the ravages of their armies. One of
the sisters, of whom we have been speaking, married one of these princes.
Her name was Tryphena. After some time, but yet while the unnatural war
was still raging between the two brothers, Cleopatra, the other
sister--the same Cleopatra, in fact, that had been divorced from Lathyrus
at the instance of his mother--espoused the other brother. Tryphena was
exceedingly incensed against Cleopatra for marrying her husband's mortal
foe, and the implacable hostility and hate of the sisters was thenceforth
added to that which the brothers had before exhibited, to complete the
display of unnatural and parricidal passion which this shameful contest
presented to the world.
In fact, Tryphena from this time seemed to feel a new and highly-excited
interest in the contest, from her eager desire to revenge herself on her
sister. She watched the progress of it, and took an active part in
pressing forward the active prosecution of the war. The party of her
husband, either from this or some other causes, seemed to be gaining the
day. The husband of Cleopatra was driven from one part of the country to
another, and at length, in order to provide for the security of his wife,
he left her in Antioch, a large and strongly-fortified city, where he
supposed that she would be safe, while he himself was engaged in
prosecuting the war in other quarters where his presence seemed to be
required.
On learning that her sister was at Antioch, Tryphena urged her husband to
attack the place. He accordingly advanced with a strong detachment of the
army, and besieged and took the city. Cleopatra would, of course, have
fallen into his hands as a captive; but, to escape this fate, she fled to
a temple for refuge. A temple was considered, in those days, an inviolable
sanctuary. The soldiers accordingly left her there. Tryphena, however,
made a request that her husband would deliver the unhappy fugitive into
her hands. She was determined, she said, to kill her. Her husband
remonstrated with her against this atrocious proposal. "It would be a
wholly useless act of cruelty," said he, "to destroy her life. She can do
us no possible harm in the future progress of the war, while to murder her
under these circumstances will only exasperate her husband and her
friends, and nerve them with new strength for the remainder of the
contest. And then, besides, she has taken refuge in a temple; and if we
violate that sanctuary, we shall incur, by such an act of sacrilege, the
implacable displeasure of heaven. Consider, too, that she is your sister,
and for you to kill her would be to commit an unnatural and wholly
inexcusable crime."
So saying, he commanded Tryphena to say no more upon the subject, for he
would on no account consent that Cleopatra should suffer any injury
whatever.
This refusal on the part of her husband to comply with her request only
inflamed Tryphena's insane resentment and anger the more. In fact, the
earnestness with which he espoused her sister's cause, and the interest
which he seemed to feel in her fate, aroused Tryphena's jealousy. She
believed, or pretended to believe, that her husband was influenced by a
sentiment of love in so warmly defending her. The object of her hate, from
being simply an enemy, became now, in her view, a rival, and she resolved
that, at all hazards, she should be destroyed. She accordingly ordered a
body of desperate soldiers to break into the temple and seize her.
Cleopatra fled in terror to the altar, and clung to it with such
convulsive force that the soldiers cut her hands off before they could
tear her away, and then, maddened by her resistance and the sight of
blood, they stabbed her again and again upon the floor of the temple,
where she fell. The appalling shrieks with which the wretched victim
filled the air in the first moments of her flight and her terror,
subsided, as her life ebbed away, into the most awful imprecations of the
judgments of heaven upon the head of the unnatural sister whose implacable
hate had destroyed her.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the specimens that we have thus given of the character and
action of this extraordinary family, the government of this dynasty,
extending, as it did, through the reigns of thirteen sovereigns and over a
period of nearly three hundred years, has always been considered one of
the most liberal, enlightened, and prosperous of all the governments of
ancient times. We shall have something to say in the next chapter in
respect to the internal condition of the country while these violent men
were upon the throne. In the meantime, we will here only add, that whoever
is inclined, in observing the ambition, the selfishness, the party spirit,
the unworthy intrigues, and the irregularities of moral conduct, which
modern rulers and statesmen sometimes exhibit to mankind in their personal
and political career, to believe in a retrogression and degeneracy of
national character as the world advances in age, will be very effectually
undeceived by reading attentively a full history of this celebrated
dynasty, and reflecting, as he reads, that the narrative presents, on the
whole, a fair and honest exhibition of the general character of the men by
whom, in ancient times, the world was governed.